Lindsey Graham’s Libertarian Challengers

Can the Robin to John McCain's Batman fend off two Ron Paul-inspired opponents?

Ever since Strom Thurmond shuffled off to an Edgefield retirement home over a decade ago, Lindsey Graham has represented South Carolina—and served as John McCain’s junior partner—in the Senate.

Like McCain, Graham has been bipartisan in his deal-making and support for war-making. What he has lacked in conservative fervor for Grover Norquist’s no-tax-hike pledge or immigration enforcement, he has compensated for as a national-security tough guy who champions the military in his state.

South Carolina is home to eight military bases and two military colleges. More than a fifth of voters in the state’s 2012 Republican presidential primary served in the armed forces. Graham is still a U.S. Air Force reservist, holding the rank of colonel and serving as senior instructor for the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, though he has never been in combat.

Graham is here again following in the footsteps of his predecessor. Thurmond, who glided onto the beaches of Normandy during the D-Day invasion at age 42, served in the reserves as a sitting senator. He chaired the Senate Armed Services Committee in his 90s.

So it is remarkable that two of Graham’s three challengers in next year’s Republican primary seem prepared to take the senator’s hawkishness head-on. State Sen. Lee Bright, a lawmaker from Greer, endorsed Ron Paul for president in the Palmetto State’s pivotal primary. Bright’s campaign website blasts the slogan, “For Senate, for liberty.”

Bright is joined by Charleston businesswoman Nancy Mace. When Graham suggested that Rand Paul was soft on national defense, Mace decided to stand with Rand. She argued that instead of endorsing “President Obama’s intrusive arm of big brother regarding the collection of data and phone records,” we might instead revisit Graham’s policies of foreign aid and intervention.

“Most would agree with Senator Graham that radical Islam is the foremost threat to our nation’s security,” Mace continued. “However, if we are truly protecting Americans from this grave threat, then how does it make sense to supply arms and aid to countries who support radical Islam, bring harm to our allies, burn our flag, hate our culture and allow terrorists to plot against the United States and her friends?”

Bright went a step further. “I think the federal government is a lot more dangerous to our liberties and our freedoms than some radical Islamist coming in,” he told a conservative website, saying that vigilance was required but Graham has “got more faith and trust in the federal government than I do” regarding national surveillance.

In years past, this would seem an improbable path to unseating a sitting GOP senator in South Carolina. But the political terrain has shifted somewhat under Graham’s feet. The entire state House delegation, Republican and Democrat, voted with Justin Amash—and thus Bright and Mace—on the NSA surveillance program.

Mick Mulvaney, Mark Sanford, and Jeff Duncan are three Republican congressmen from the state who have clashed with McCain-Republicans on occasion. New Sen. Tim Scott supported Rand Paul’s drone filibuster. State Sen. Tom Davis joined Bright in endorsing Ron Paul for president before last year’s primary.

South Carolina has also become more willing to revolt against the party establishment. In 2012, local Republicans broke their long string of support for the national frontrunner by being one of only two states to vote for Newt Gingrich. Former Sen. Jim DeMint, now president of the Heritage Foundation, actively recruited and raised money for primary challengers running against his colleagues.

Graham is not going to go away quietly, however. He is sitting on at least $6.3 million in cash on hand. While his job approval rating has tumbled, it remains a respectable (if not insurmountable) 57 percent. Late last year, Public Policy Polling found enthusiasm for a conservative primary challenge to Graham cooling.

Finally, Graham’s approach to intraparty politics is similar to his foreign policy: always spoiling for a fight. Many Republicans who have lost to Tea Party challengers have behaved as if it is beneath them to engage their opponents. Graham will relish doing so, taking a page out of McCain’s playbook against J.D. Hayworth in 2010.

Graham is sure to try to make his primary opponents look like pacifists at best, Jane Fonda impersonators at worst.

That will be quite an undertaking against Mace, the first woman to graduate from the Citadel, the state’s military college. Mace’s father, retired Brigadier Gen. James Mace, is also a highly decorated Citadel graduate.

It also remains to be seen how the number of challengers impacts the race. Because there will be a runoff if no candidate reaches 50 percent, the risk is less that the anti-Graham vote will be split than that divided resources—and infighting—will prevent either Bright or Mace from becoming viable. But a runoff strategy in a crowded primary field worked for Ted Cruz in Texas.

The primary will nevertheless be an interesting pre-2016 test of whether the GOP is still Graham’s old party.

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17 Responses to Lindsey Graham’s Libertarian Challengers

So this guy is a tough national security type, on everything else he is basically liberal, yet that makes him conservative ?

I wish Nancy Mace the best of luck in ousting Graham, but since he has the backing of the elites and represents the comfortable status quo he will have a lot of money coming his way and Mace will struggle against that.

It may be too much to hope that Graham will be unseated, but how gratifying that would be, and how heartening for our future.

Graham is right behind McCain and the odious Joe Lieberman in involving us in other people’s quarrels, squandering taxpayer money on pointless wars (and worthless “allies”), and both arguing and voting for the recent stunning growth of the national security state.

It’s a shame that Walter Jones isn’t running for that seat, a Tarheel congressman regularly re-elected by a heavily military constituency who well understands the threat to constitutional government and real national security posed by the likes of Graham.

Israeli company Natus, which was acquired in 2010 by the American company Boeing, supplied the software and hardware used at AT&T wiretapping rooms, according to whistleblower Mark Klein, who revealed the information in 2004. Klein, a past technician at AT&T who filed a suit against the company for spying on its customers, revealed a “secret room” in the company’s San Fransisco office, where the NSA collected data on American citizens’ telephone calls and Internet surfing.

Graham is a dangerous tool of the ruling fascist elite, there is no hope for regaining freedom as long as scum like this remain in power. Look at the money trail.

Terrorism is the revenge and blowback of brutal foreign policy that muders and overthrows governments not to establish “democracy” but to plunder natural resources for the military/corporate complex. If the elites stopped ravaging and plundering the world the revenge would end too. There is no existential threat to AmeriKa, it is a shame so many young Americans and people overseas are dying because of the greed and lust for power of the financial elite and their international corporations.

For anyone with centrist to liberal views this Primary is going to be yet another opportunity to grab the popcorn and watch the crazy unfold. OK, they’re cool on the NSA. But just wait until they share their views on immigrants, science, and gays and lesbians.

“Glided onto the beaches of Normandy” sounds good, but is hardly factual. They came down inland and mostly in the wrong places. Graham, it is said, did label himself a combat veteran of the Gulf War early on. I can’t say tho that I don’t appreciate his wussiness. Better not to have served in our recent wars, tho we probably got out money’s worth from that one. However, in that case, he ought to keep his mouth shut or at least speak more softly. I feel pretty much the same about McCain. I don’t recall them giving a lot of medals to WWII POWs. Mace is an army brat, tho I think it interesting that women appear overwhelmingly more in favor of the American security apparatus than men. Eight bases is a lot of largess, but South Carolina has a reputation for independence going back to colonial times.

Three primary challengers means that they are probably going to cannibalize the movement/libertarian vote.

I’m a liberal; which is to say that I don’t have a dog in this particular fight; but if the various dissatisfied factions are seriously interested in bumping off Graham, they need to coalesce behind one of the challengers and get the others off the stage, ASAP.

If we listened to these nutty Libertarians, this would be no further advanced than we were before the Revolutionary War. They believe we should crawl in a hole, and let world go by. Thank goodness, the American people have more sense than allow that to happen. These people do need to crawl in a hole, and leave us alone!

Hey Schock;
There is nothing nutty about Libertarians.
Austrian/Libertarian economics predicted all of the financial trouble we are experiencing for one case in point. Most Americans are brainwashed about mostly everything on foreign policy its not about keeping America safe or spreading “democracy”its about the wealthy elites plundering the resources of other countries through economic war, regular shooting war, murder, coups etc.
American foreign policy is simpy to increase the power and wealth of the ruling class at everyone elses expense.

To actually believe otherwise indicates you have swallowed the propoganda, my advice is to wake up and free yourself from the matrix but beware in a land built on lies the truth is treason, just ask our latest patriot Mr. Snowden. Try visiting Lew Rockwell website and antiwar.com for starters and learn something.

William: you are embarassingly ignorant of what libertarians actually believe.

We want MORE peaceful, voluntary, mutually beneficial interaction between the peoples of America and other nations.

More people visiting America and the other countries as tourists, in both directions, making us more familiar and comfortable with each other.

More cultural understanding and education through vastly increased student-exchange programs in high schools and universities.

More trade between America and other nations, impeded by fewer government-imposed sanctions or threats of sanctions.

All that is the diametric opposite of going in a hole and watcing the world go by.

My wife and I are dedicated libertarians, supported Ron Paul in the GOP primary in both 2008 and 2012, voted for the Libertarian ticket in the 2012 presidential general election, and are inclined to support Rand Paul so far. I speak two languages and she speaks three fluently.

We plan to prepare our multi-racial children for a much more interconnected world by having them learn at least two foreign languages each (Mandarin plus one other) and taking them overseas to practice those languages with native speakers as our resources permit.

Sorry that our real lives, real families, and real views give the lie to your offensive and conclusory stereotypes about people who simply disagree with you.

The GOP experimented with post-cold-war military adventurism under Bush-Cheney, and got clobbered by “reality on the ground”. The GOP hawks are enemies of both peace and freedom. The more countries you occupy, the more people hate you, and the more you need to impose a National Security State at home to “keep us safe”. War is the lifeblood of the state. After what we have seen in Iraq, Afghanistan and North Africa, we must conclude that our interventions have been catastrophic. McCain & Lindsey are what Ike warned us about in his farewell address.